


Alike In Dignity

by Musyc



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Community: dramione_remix, Draco Malfoy - character, F/M, Grief/Mourning, HP: Epilogue Compliant, Hermione Granger - character, Parenthood, PostWar, Remix, Sorrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:24:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Musyc/pseuds/Musyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after the deaths of their children, Draco and Hermione meet in the cemetery beneath a sycamore grove.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alike In Dignity

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always more interested in the aftermath of a situation than the events leading up to it. "But what happened next?" is something heard a lot around my house. XD Rather than simply retell the story of Romeo and Juliet with Draco and Hermione as substitutes for the main characters, I wanted to explore what might happen if they took the roles of the Capulet and Montague parents. I've used several of Shakespeare's lines throughout this fic, but I'm sure he won't mind. He was notorious for 'borrowing', himself.

Daily Prophet - 23 August 2022

Shock and tragedy rocked the wizarding world yesterday when Scorpius Malfoy and Rose Weasley, missing for three days, were finally located in the ruins of Castle Calvay. Evidence indicates the young couple died in an apparent suicide pact. Weasley (16), daughter of Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, both celebrated heroes of the Second War, was found cradled in the arms of Malfoy (16), only child of former Death Eater Draco Malfoy and Astoria Greengrass (deceased). Investigations are continuing. The Ministry of Magic and the bereaved families have provided no comment.

* * *

Mordant Vines Wizarding Cemetery - 27 August 2023

Draco brushed his fingers across the low headstone, tracing the sharp, fresh edges of the name and date carved in a clear script. Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy, 19 July 2006 - 20 August 2022. The black marble headstone was a perfect match for the one beside it, though the seven years since Astoria's death had softened the carvings of her stone. Time and Draco's frequent touch were wearing down the edges of her name. Draco stretched out his hand, his platinum wedding ring gleaming against his pale skin, and laid his palm over the image carved above his wife's name. Heliotrope entwined with rosemary - devotion and remembrance.

His lips twitched as he recalled the argument they'd had over that in her last days. _I don't want you mourning me forever, Draco_ , she said before coughing into the silk handkerchief that never left her grasp. She folded the fabric over to hide the small spots of blood. _Grieve if you will, but let it end. Don't live your life in sorrow. I want our son to grow up happy. I want you to live happy._

"I'm sorry, Astoria," he whispered, returning his attention to his son's headstone. "I'm sorry, Scorpius. I've failed you. I don't know what went wrong or how, but.... But I've failed you both."

His throat closed and he tilted forward to rest his forehead against the stone. The sun had barely taken the chill from the marble, and Draco felt the cold soaking into him. The gentle breeze carried the murmurs of voices across the cemetery, fluttering between the rows of stones and the grass-covered graves. Draco didn't look up, didn't move.

Grief weighed on him, burdened and bowed his shoulders. Draco closed his eyes as they prickled and stung. He pressed his lips together to hold back any sound, but let the tears escape from under his lids. They slipped down his cheeks and off his chin, falling silently to darken the petals of the crimson-black roses and white chrysanthemums laid at the foot of the stone. Grief and lamentation.

The sycamore trees planted near the row of Malfoy stones rustled, their leaves moving in the slow breeze. Lucius, Narcissa, Astoria, Scorpius. One spot waited in the center, the black marble stone still uncarved. Draco's shoulders shook and he braced his hands on Scorpius' stone as he struggled to breathe. Footsteps crunched on the gravel path nearby. They came closer. Closer.

Closer. Draco tensed, his back and knees aching from his position, but he didn't move. The footsteps stopped, and silence fell around him again. Even the soft rustle of the breeze and the sycamore leaves stopped. Draco took a deep breath, a shuddering breath to force air past the lump in his throat and the cold fire burning in his heart. He pushed to his feet, leaning heavily on Scorpius' stone for balance. He scrubbed his hand across his eyes and cheeks and wiped the gathered tears onto the embroidered front of his robes.

He turned, unsurprised to see the woman who stood on the path, the pointed toes of her boots an inch from the narrow obelisk that marked one corner of the Malfoy plot. Her dark curls were caught back in gold combs, two patches of white shining at her temples. Hermione watched him, her hands locked around the long stem of a white lily.

Draco nodded to her, just once, to acknowledge her presence, her own grief and sorrow. Hermione walked closer as he turned his attention back to the headstones. Silently, she stood beside him. The hem of her robes swayed against his leg. She crouched by the stone and laid the white lily in front of it. Draco didn't look up as she stood, waiting for her to speak. It took a full minute before she did.

"Did you know?" she asked.

Draco folded his hands into his sleeves to warm his fingers. "Did I know what?" he said, his voice sounding rough to him.

"My daughter. Your son. Did you know? Did you have _any_ idea?"

Draco heard the catch in her voice. He couldn't help but hear it. It was the same catch in his throat every morning when he woke up and remembered. Sighing, he faced Hermione. Her dark eyes were shimmering, but she had her chin raised, her jaw set. "I knew he had a lover," Draco said, watching for a flinch or flare of anger that never came. "I didn't know who. I actually suspected he was seeing a man, with as secretive as he'd been."

Hermione's hands tightened at her sides, then released convulsively, as if she were throwing something to the ground. She shook her head without taking her eyes from his face. "No," she said, and her voice trembled. "No, that can't be all. You had to know more. You had to know _something_."

"I didn't question him. I never asked. I didn't know until too late. He was a young man with a secret, twisted up with it. Sometimes he would lock himself in his room, pen himself up in his chambers, shut all his windows until he created his own night. Burdened and mad with love, it seems. I wish now I'd spoken to him of it." Draco met her eyes. "I remember what that was like."

She flinched then, ducking her head until the mass of her hair fell to cover her face. She turned away from him, turned her back to him. Her shoulders slumped, then shook. Draco heard a deep sniff. He started to reach for her, but pulled his hand back. "His first year, when he came home for Christmas," he said, forcing his voice steady. "He said he'd made a friend. A little girl in Gryffindor, with red hair. I laughed and I told him that I hoped she wasn't a Weasley. He never mentioned her again. Not once."

Hermione turned around. She twisted her hands into her sleeves and stared at him, her tears pouring freely. "How could you?" she whispered. "Did you learn nothing from the war? Nothing from what came after? Nothing from what we--" She closed her eyes and pressed her lips together until the skin went white. Each tiny muscle in her face quivered as she struggled to keep her control. She opened her eyes, blinking away the water that spiked her lashes. " _Why_?"

"I envied him."

Hermione stared at him, her face white, the tears drying on her cheeks. Draco laughed without any humor, the sound a choking gall. "Can you believe it? I envied him. Twelve years old, and I was jealous of him."

She took a step closer, and closer, until she could lay her hand against his chest. Draco stood still and let her, staked to the ground by the bright smoke in her eyes. "Why?" she asked again.

Fingers trembling, he laid his hand over hers. He could feel his heart racing beneath her palm. "Misery," he said in a quiet voice. "Sharp misery that wore me to the bones. The world changed enough to let him have what I couldn't. I regretted what I'd said to him, once I realized what I'd done, but by then it was too late. I should have told him to cherish her, to treat her well, and to never let go of her. To let ancient grudges die."

He wrapped his fingers tight around hers and pulled her with him to a small bench at the edge of the Malfoy plot, tucked beneath the sycamore trees. Hermione sat beside him, her shoulder brushing his arm. Even through the layers of cloth that separated them, he could feel her, his skin prickling like thorns. Draco reached into the inner pocket of his robes and drew out a slim leather portfolio. "I went through Scorpius' room a couple of weeks ago," he said in a low voice. "I found this." He opened the portfolio and gave it to Hermione.

The photograph inside had Scorpius and Rose with their arms around each other. The wind had tangled their hair and chapped their cheeks, but both of them had shining eyes. They smiled at the camera before turning to each other and sharing a quick kiss. It was the only photograph Draco had ever seen of his son where that much _joy_ was in Scorpius' face.

"I don't know where this was taken," he said. He reached over and touched the background of the photograph, tapping the arched windows of the building behind the young couple. "But I know it was from last year. I bought that shirt for Scorpius for his birthday."

"Somerset," Hermione said. Her voice was small and tight, and she drew the tip of her finger along the line of Rose's cheek. "The Vicar's Close, in Wells. It's the oldest residential street in Europe. I used to take Rose there every summer. She loved history, and she'd tug on my sleeve and beg me to tell her stories about the priests who'd lived there in the fourteenth or fifteenth century." Tears slipped down Hermione's cheek and she wiped them away with the side of her hand. Silently, Draco took a handkerchief from his pocket and laid it across her fingers. She wiped her face and held the silk square crumpled in her fist. Draco watched her hand as it moved. He saw the pale line of skin on her finger where her wedding ring once rode, gone now after a divorce he remembered reading about years before, and he unconsciously rubbed his thumb over the ring he hadn't been able to bring himself to remove despite the years that had passed since his wife died.

"I'm not surprised she took him there, then," Draco said. "Scorpius was keen as anything on history as well. He'd sit in the gallery at the Manor for hours, talking to the portraits. I never knew what he talked about with them, but it kept him occupied so I let it go."

Hermione started to hand the portfolio back to him, but Draco held up one hand to stop her. "Keep it. I made a copy for myself."

Hermione closed the portfolio and clutched it to her chest, her arms folded over it in a protective gesture. After a long, shivering exhale, she tucked the portfolio into her robes. She stayed silent for a moment, then tipped her head to peer at him around a loose curl. "Thank you," she said. "I appreciate it. I have a lot of pictures of Rose, but they're almost all with family. A few with her school friends. That's the only one of her with a boyfriend. I think he may have been the only boyfriend she had."

"I'm sure she was the only girlfriend Scorpius had," he said, his attention focused on that curl as it swayed against her cheek. "Malfoys have never been the sort to spread their affections lightly. If he loved her, he loved her with everything he had in him."

"I know. I know well enough how Malfoys love." Hermione bunched the skirts of her robes up in her fingers and dipped her head. "Everyone said that-that Astoria was the greatest love of your life. That you once said your marriage to her was a symbol that you'd been forgiven for the things you'd done in your youth, because no man could have a soul damned to hell if he'd been granted the love of an angel."

Draco laughed under his breath. "Did I say that? How very pompous of me. I must have been terribly drunk."

"So was it true? Was she the _greatest_ love of your life?"

Draco thought he might have imagined the tremor in Hermione's voice, but there was no mistaking the quake in her shoulders or the way her hands locked around each other, tightening until her knuckles turned white from pressure. He kept silent for a moment, then reached over and laid his hand on hers. "She was one of two."

Hermione shivered. She ducked her head until her chin was pressed against her chest, her eyes hooded. "And the other?" she whispered. She loosened the tight grip of her fingers and turned her hand over beneath his, palm to palm. "The second of two? The reason you envied your son?"

"You know the answer to that one." Draco leaned close to her, his forehead resting against her temple for a handful of heartbeats. He squeezed her hand gently, rubbed his thumb against her knuckles, then slowly straightened up and released her. He exhaled and curled his hand around the warmth left on his skin from the touch of her hand. "The first of two."

Hermione wiped her cheeks with the side of her hand and slowly raised her head. "What happened to us?" she asked in a quiet voice. "How did we end up like this? I'm divorced, you're widowed, our children.... Death is my son-in-law. What happened? Why did it happen?"

Draco stared across the cemetery. "We fought too much," he said in a heavy voice. "We fought over everything. We were young, the war was still fresh. We still had wounds that hadn't healed. I think--" He shook his head and leaned his elbows on his knees. "I know I was desperate to prove something. To prove I wasn't some soulless, evil minion of the Dark Lord. I'm afraid I used you, Hermione."

"I let you." Hermione laid her hand on his arm. "I knew how much you wanted to be something other than the man you were raised to be. I knew how much you craved something beyond that life. I thought...." She gave a quiet laugh, as empty of humor as his own had been before. "I thought maybe I could help you purge your sins. I wasn't the right woman for that, though. It killed me, you know. For a long time, I thought I'd failed. Failed myself, failed you. I'd see you with Astoria sometimes, at Ministry events or even just out shopping, and I could feel something like a cold fire twisting inside me. Like someone had filled my stomach with feathers made of lead. I couldn't stand that she'd given you the peace that I couldn't. I wanted to hate her. But I saw how happy she'd made you. I wasn't right for you then. She was. She brought you some peace."

Draco echoed her laugh, short and rueful. "We definitely couldn't manage peace. I don't think we went one day without arguing. But it's not all on you. It's not that you weren't right for me. We weren't right for each other. It wasn't time for us. Not then."

She let out her air in a slow, sighing exhale and leaned against his shoulder. "No," she said, taking his hand and linking his fingers with hers. "Not then. Too much strife and rage, then. Grudge and enmity. Too much of it." She rocked her head on his shoulder and squeezed his fingers. "It's time to bury all of that, Draco. It's time now, don't you think?"

He listened to the wind blowing through the sycamore tree, listened to the beat of his heart in his ears. Hermione was warm beside him, making a fire sparkle in his blood. She lifted her head and met his eyes, and Draco found written there, buried deep and locked away, love. A tender thing he'd known too late. Cupping her cheek, he tilted his head to hers and kissed her. "We'll prove more true this time," he whispered. Hermione smiled and caught his mouth again.


End file.
